Philippians: The Church Exemplar?

Philippians

What is a New Testament Christian Life Supposed to Look Like?

What is supposed to happen when a human encounters the God of the Bible?

The obvious answer is listen (hear) and believe (accept).  It’s what happens when the Holy Spirit ‘turns on the light,’ however gradually or dramatically He does so.

What then?  Then the hear and believe continues and expands as one is confronted with ever more and ever deeper revelation of the Bible, and illumination by the Spirit of God.

What then?  The hear and believe process is unending, probably even in eternity in the direct, immediate presence of God.  But in the here and now there is also a calling together with other, fellow believers who are experiencing the hear and believe work of God.  We tend to call that gathering a “church,” but such word is freighted with all manner of extra-Biblical (and non-Biblical) meanings.

Let us look carefully at such group of fellow believers experiencing together the hear and believe process of the New Testament Christian life by examining the Epistle to the Philippians.  Our purpose here is not to develop a full commentary on Philippians, but to look across the entire Epistle by just this lens of what is a “church,” to better understand what a “church” really looks like in Biblical terms, and, importantly, what is supposed to be ‘up to.’

Background on Philippians

This short letter was written by the Apostle Paul to a group of believers in the ancient Greek city of Philippi; the city was Greek by history, culture, and language, but it was truly a city of the Roman Empire.  The Epistle named after the believers in Philippi was written in about 60 A.D., while Paul was a prisoner in Rome.

Paul had been used of God to bring the Gospel to Macedonia (northern Greece) as recorded in Acts 16.  Philippi is particularly well-known because of the earthquake miracle that occurred there during Paul’s Second Missionary Journey, while Paul and Silas were imprisoned because of their having proclaimed the Gospel in the city.  That earthquake literally opened the prison walls, but metaphorically opened the Gospel to the Philippian jailer, to his family, and also to the Greek and European world.

The Philippian letter (Epistle) is very short, just four chapters, 104 verses, and ca. 1700 words.  One can read it aloud in less than 15 minutes, and in less than 10 minutes silently.  Think about how many wasted 10 minute periods one has in any given day, or how many such 10-minute periods are spent (wasted) on mindless / meaningless reading online or print media, or watching TV.  Even further, it is not beyond reach for an average person to memorize the entire Epistle of 1700 words.  The typical pop song averages about 200 words, so memorizing Philippians is equivalent, in words, to knowing the lyrics to eight or nine songs, which is not an unusual feat of memory.

There are many audio narrations of the Bible.  A particularly beautiful one of Philippians is by Max McLean, using the English Standard Version (ESV) text.  His narration is available of less than 13 minutes is here:  https://youtu.be/g2-5gJ8Gx3A   BEFORE clicking on the narration link, it will be helpful to you to have the ESV text of Philippians to follow along with Mr. McLean; the ESV translation is here: Philippians 1-4 ESV

The Philippian Epistle

For our purposes here, the attachments below are useful study resources, which I encourage you to click on the highlighted links and print out or read on your screen:

Below is a brief explanation of the above descriptive terms and abbreviations:

  • Pericopes:  these are the heading words that Bible publishers insert into the Bible as an aid to reading.  Pericopes are not translated words as no such headings existed in the original mss.  So pericopes are not God’s Word, and are not inspired, in the same way that chapter headings and verse numbers were later man-made editions.  Pericopes, chapter and verse designations can be helpful but we should remember that they are not part of the original Bible text.
  • Clausal Outline:  sentences typically are comprised of related word groupings known as clauses.  The more complex the sentence the more numerous and significant are its clauses.  Separating a sentence into clauses can be a great aid in seeing the structure of the language and understanding the meaning of a passage.
  • Lemmas:  are the dictionary (aka lexical) form of the original Gr word.  Just as “run” is the dictionary form of  “ran” or “running.”
  • Roots:  are the core components of ideas that may be expressed in multiple lemmas and mss words.  So for our example of the lemma of “run,” we could find “run” as a root in words such as “runner,” “forerunner” (as in John the Baptist), even “runnable.”  Looking a root words for a language that is not our native tongue can be  helpful in making meaningful connections across various Scriptures.
  • Transliterations:  are English letter-for-letter for the corresponding Gr word, whether mss, lemma, or root.
  • Mss:  is a an abbreviation for the word “manuscript,” which means the original Gr text of the New Testament.
  • Gr: is an abbreviation for “Greek,” which is the language of the New Testament, although more accurately it is known as Koine Greek, or common Greek, to distinguish it from other even more ancient forms of Greek or of modern Greek.

Who is “The Who” of the Philippian Epistle?

The first of the “W” words that we use to grasp any event or story is “Who” (the rest are What, When, Where, Why, and sometimes How).  So, who is the Who of Philippians?

Clearly the Epistle is written by the Apostle Paul (and with brother Timothy) to a body of believers at the Roman City Philippi (including the elders and deacons).  And there are a few specific references to individuals, such as:  Epaphroditus, Euodia, Syntyche.  But these are not the real Who.

The word Gr frequency chart of Philippians shows us the following number of occurrences:

  • Christ, 38x (times)
  • God, 23x
  • Jesus, 22x
  • Lord, 15x
  • (Holy) Spirit, 3x

So, there are 100+ direct references to God in just these 104 verses, not including all the personal pronouns (such as “He”).  This is a text about God.  God is like a golden thread that is woven throughout the book.  So, I would suggest in an initial reading of the plain text Epistle given above, simply circle or underline even occurrence of God in any His revealed forms as shown in the bullet list directly above.

What is “The What” of the Philippian Epistle?

Next, let us discern what the Epistle is addressing.  Discovering the What takes a little more work, as the central theme of the Epistle recurs again and again throughout the book but it isn’t always obvious on a cursory read.  Further, we need to first consider certain words used in the text that we often overlook or don’t fully consider.

Gospel, Evangelist / Evangelize

The root Gr word for Gospel (a noun), Evangelist (also a noun), and Evangelize (a verb) is the same:  transliterated it has a prefix, eu, and the main root, angel (pronounced “angle” as two sides are at an angle).   The Gr word angel means “messenger,” which of course includes a special type of messenger, an angelic being entering Space-Time with a message from God.  But the Gr word angel is also used for human messengers, and even for inanimate texts, as the OT Law.  The prefix eu normally means “good” as in our word “eulogy” which means, literally, good words about someone, usually in the context of a funeral.

Euangelion occurs 9x in Philippians, as shown in the below chart:

It is noteworthy that euangelion occurs at both the beginning (Phil. 1:5) and end (Phil. 4:15) of the Epistle, as, in effect, bookends on the letter.  It is clear from its usage that the Apostle Paul is in the service of The Gospel, including being imprisoned as he writes the very letter.  The Philippians themselves are also participants with Paul’s mission of proclaiming and defending The Gospel (see Phil. 1:7, 27).

We tend to think of “Gospel” as meaning truth, as in the phrase “Gospel truth” (meaning, someone is telling the absolute, reliable truth).  But that is not the Biblical meaning of the word, though of course it does convey the claim of being true.  The meaning is, literally “Good News,” and could so be translated in each of the 9x occurrences given above, as it is in some modern translations.

This meaning of The Gospel is important because (1) there is a message / announcement that is being proclaimed (or defended), (2) it is news in the important sense that what is being proclaimed is not already known, or self-evident, and (3) it is something good, actually very very good, even wonderful, amazing.  So, The Gospel is not a law-like proclamation that stems from the NT, deriving from Jesus’s life, death and resurrection, as a new body of rules to be followed for the self-attainment of righteousness in the sight / judgment of God.  The Gospel is about proclaiming that all the right and just requirements of The Law in the OT have been completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ on our behalf, making us completely, utterly, and unalterably reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:17ff).

This Gospel message should lead to deep, great joy.  And that brings us to another family of key words in Philippians.

Joy

  • Grace
  • Joy
  • Delight